#(compare the reception immigrants get in eg chiapas and you'll immediately see some of the fault lines in intraregional tensions)

[chamerionwrites]

Thousands of people are already waiting in the city to claim asylum in the US, and even before the arrival of the first groups from the caravan, resources for migrants were stretched thin, said César Palencia, director of the Tijuana municipal migration affairs office.

“We are trying to find shelter space for people, but we are worried. The shelters are 90% or more full. Right now we are looking into other options – maybe a soccer field, or other public space,” he said. “We definitely feel abandoned by Mexico’s federal government. We requested extra funds and a coordination strategy from them and still nothing.”

The UN refugee agency and Red Cross have recently set up offices in the city and local volunteers, mostly from church groups, have been donating food and clothing to the newly arrived migrants.

Most of the recent arrivals have been put up in a temporary shelter in a sports center in the north of the city where city employees had set up rows of mattresses and blankets for 360 migrants on the floor of a gymnasium...

But not all locals are as welcoming; some have even responded in terms similar to those employed by the caravan’s most prominent enemy, Donald Trump.

On Wednesday evening, residents protested in Playas de Tijuana, an affluent neighborhood by the beach where some of the migrants had set up camp.

“They entered the country violently, they are demanding services, they are smoking marijuana, who knows what,” said Tere Lamas, a longtime resident. “The United States already said they can’t come, so what’s going to happen?”

Later that night, locals moved down to where the migrants were sleeping, chanting “Out of Tijuana” and “Mexico has its own problems��, and singing the Mexican national anthem. Scuffles broke out as screaming protesters threatened and attacked local residents defending the group, along with journalists and the migrants themselves.

Arnoldo Astorga, a member of a local vigilante group, said the residents had called his group. “This is like an invasion. It looks and smells like an invasion. They come over here with no respect.”

Throughout the protest, other locals quietly handed out tacos to migrants sitting nearby.